Un rêve en rouge et noir OR Dancing in the Rain
by Mengde
Summary: ..."I hate Edge City when it rains. It smells like rust and sewage and shattered lives..." A storm is brewing in Edge, and Vincent's vanished. Yuffie hires a private eye to find the missing gunman, but the detective is in for much more than he bargained.
1. Il a mis son chapeau sur sa tête

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We here at Club Mengde would like to welcome you to a very special film noir event. We do not own any of the intellectual properties of Final Fantasy VII. The narrator of this story, however, is ours, and we like him.

That is to say, I felt like writing some kind of gritty film noir/pulp fiction-esque mystery story set in the FFVII-verse and narrated by an OC private eye (private eye and private dick are both euphemisms for private detective, if any of my readers are unfamiliar with the slang).

No worries - on my writer's honor I promise you that this particular OC is not a Sue or Stu, is not a forgotten relative or long-lost significant other of one of the main cast, or guilty of any other grievous OC offenses. He of course has a past, and of course he knows the main cast in some capacity - otherwise, their cameos in this piece would be just plain strange, wouldn't they? Yes, this fic features plenty of our favorite canon characters, with emphasis on Yuffie and Vincent.

I'm rating it T for a little language and violence. Also, if you feel that the narrative is a little florid with the strange descriptions and similes, it's a stylistic thing. Trust me.

This piece was originally a oneshot, but it came out very long for a single-chapter thing, so for your reading convenience I've split it up into three chapters; the latter two will be posted in a little bit when I feel the story's caught at least a few eyes. By the by, if anyone is wondering, the French title for the story translates as "A dream in red and black," which may or may not be significant. Without further ado, then...

* * *

Walking through Edge City in the rain…

**Un rêve en ****rouge et noir**

**OR**

**Dancing in the Rain**

**A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction**

**Written by Mengde**

Sometimes life kinda takes you by surprise. I mean, it's interesting to think about. In one night, I've learned that the world is about to end, and it's AVALANCHE's fault.

I'm crouched in a little hidey-hole between two stacks of crates in a warehouse, my .357 magnum clutched in my wet and trembling hands. I'm down to eight rounds, two in the chamber and six in my pocket. It'll take a full thirty seconds to shuck the empty shells from the pistol and get the live rounds in, so I'm essentially down to two shots before I'm screwed.

My head hurts, my mouth tastes like blood, and the warehouse smells of wet wood and rot. I can hear the heavy breathing of the man who is trying his very best to kill me, as well as the occasional peal of thunder from the storm that's still raging outside.

The irony of the situation is that it all started with a single question, though it wasn't posed as such. If I had known that trying to find the answer would have brought me to this insane place and told me about the end of the world, I might have considered staying home. The question, unlike the situation I'm in now, was simple.

_Where is Vincent Valentine?_

* * *

It was around five in the afternoon when she walked into my office, but you couldn't have told it by looking out the window. It was storming, a black bank of clouds like the wrath of God coming in fast. An endless drumbeat of raindrops beat out a melancholy tune against the building's roof, punctuated by the occasional tinny rattle of the leak in the far corner hitting the bottom of the pail I'd set up to catch it.

Who am I? My name's Dick, short for Richard, and despite all the shit I took for it when I was a kid, it's a good name that I'm proud to have. It also describes my profession pretty perfectly. Most people would look at me and say I'm nobody special, and they'd be right – unless they counted being the only private eye in Edge as criteria for special.

So, this girl walked into my office. I would tell you that my secretary informed me that I had a guest, and I told her to send the guest inside, but I don't have a secretary. What I do have is a small, leaky office on the corner of Ninth and Falcon Streets. When I first opened, the sign read PRIVATE DICK FOR HIRE. I thought it was a pretty good joke.

I changed that soon after people started showing up with the wrong ideas about my profession.

The dame was a little more than five feet high, Wutainese features. She wore a pretty heavy coat, what with the rain, and carried an umbrella that she shook out before she came in with it, which was nice. A little courtesy goes a long way, I figure.

By this point I was kinda depressed. I took one look at her, sighed, and went back to my pulp fiction. "If you're looking to investigate your boyfriend's fidelity, I've done that for three different people this week," I told her. "I'm tired of it. Go find someone else."

She didn't say anything. She leaned her umbrella against the wall, flounced over to my desk, and snatched the book out of my hands, then sat herself down on the edge of my desk. I kept silent too and watched her look it over. She had grey eyes, the color of the sky on the days when you get up and look outside and figure that there's no reason to go anywhere or do anything.

"People actually read this stuff?" she asked me after a minute.

"If by 'this stuff' you mean pulp fiction, then yes, people do," I told her. "Although not as much anymore. It was kinda before your time."

She put the book down and looked at me. "When d'you figure my time was, huh? I'm not that young."

I smiled apologetically. "No need to get flustered." After a moment's consideration, I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out my cigarette case. "You smoke?"

"No."

"Mind if I do?"

"With the company I keep, I'd be crazy if I did."

I shrugged at that and lit one up, feeling the back of my throat instantly turn into a parched wasteland filled with smoldering coals. It tasted like death and the promise of redemption that's never delivered upon.

"So like I already told you," I said to her, "I don't care if your boyfriend's unfaithful. I'm not interested in finding out."

She snorted. "Please. I _know _that he's faithful. That's not why I'm here."

I look at her and slowly exhale the smoke through my nostrils. "Why are you here, then?"

"I need you to find him." She pulled a photo out of an inner pocket in her coat and handed it to me. It was of a pretty strange-looking guy – he was wearing a suit, but it looked like a torture device on him instead of clothing. He had pale skin, intense features, long black hair. The photo was in black and white, like everything in my life seems to be. "I need you to find Vincent Valentine."

There it was. I told you that the question wasn't posed as such, but that was when she put it in my head.

I looked at the picture, looked back at her. "Vincent Valentine. Head of WRO black ops and Reeve Tuesti's personal trashman." I blew a succession of smoke rings that brushed by the girl's face, which didn't seem to faze her. "And that would make you Yuffie Kisaragi, head of the WRO's espionage and intelligence branch."

Her expression didn't betray anything, but she nodded. "Yep."

"Why does the most well-informed woman in the world need a private dick's help in locating the scariest man in the world?" I asked.

"I can't go through official channels for this," Kisaragi told me. "Nobody can be trusted right now. I need a third party, someone who doesn't know Vincent and isn't involved with the WRO. Besides," and at this she leaned forward and brought her face to within about an inch of mine, "you _are _a detective, right? Don't you ever wanna test those powers of deduction?"

I exhaled some smoke in her face, which made her eyes water. "You're, what, twenty-one? Drop the femme fatale act, sugar."

She rolled her eyes at me and got off of my desk. "You're not the only guy who calls me that, y'know."

"I'm distraught. My fee is twenty-five thousand gil, half in advance." When she looked at me like I was stupid, I added, "And if I find Valentine, you throw in a bonus and send out somebody to fix my goddamn roof. That leak is irritating."

"Fine… on one condition." She pulled a wad of bills out of her coat, counted out twelve thousand and five hundred, and plunked it down on my desk. "You have to find him by tomorrow morning."

I held one of the bills up to the light out of habit before putting most of it in the secret drawer of my desk and sticking the rest in my pocket. "Right. A rush job, huh? Any particular reason?"

"Let's just say that the time limit isn't just me being crazy. I have a good reason."

"Fair enough. You got any suggestion about where I should start?"

Kisaragi shrugged and gave me a grin that I would describe as 'impish.' "You're the private dick, you tell me."

"Of course." I got up, pulled my gun out of the drawer I keep it in, and checked the chamber. "By the way, I have one question for you."

She seemed to consider it. "Okay, one question. Shoot."

"We've never met before, and I've never done any work for the WRO. Why'd you decide to come to me, even if I was the only private eye in the city? People don't walk in to the office of somebody they've never met, ask him to find their missing boyfriend and partner in helping Tuesti rule the world, and put twelve and a half thousand gil on their desk out of blind faith."

"No blind faith here, _sugar,_" she told me with a wink as she walked out. "Like you said, I _am_ the most well-informed woman in the world. I know I can count on you… Hydra."

* * *

So. You're probably saying, "Hydra? Oh, no. Dick has a mysterious and tragic past where he used to be a stone-faced killer and that was his _nom de crime._" Well, that's not true at all. Mostly.

Just bear with me.

I started with the usual suspects. Valentine, as befits the head of the black ops branch of the WRO, usually does a lot of hands-on work, and I figured that he had gone missing during the course of his duties.

I hate Edge City when it rains. It smells like rust and sewage and shattered lives, barely pieced together with spit and string and a prayer or two. The wreckage of old Midgar is what makes up this dark metropolis, memories of what came before, and it returns to haunt us whenever the skies cloud over.

As I said, on that night it was storming like the wrath of God, so I put on my trenchcoat and hat and stumbled out into the gale, making sure my .357 was secure in the coat's waterproof lining. I've had guns seize up on me before and not fire because of rust, so I'm always careful about that.

The skies poured endless drops of dank, stagnant water, and I shouldered past the winos, deviants and general scum of the eastern north side of the city. Someday I'm going to get an office with a better location, but this is the best I can afford, and besides, the ambiance is kind of fitting for the work I usually do.

There's one bar that's always open, even on nights like this when the heavens are lashing us all for our sins with scourges made of rain, and I knew that the people I was looking for would be there. If I needed to talk to any street scum, they'd be there too – when their normal haunts were closed, they would invariably drift to this place, like sewage spiraling around a drain.

The sign above the door was barely legible through the pouring tide, but I managed to make out _Seventh Heaven _and knew that I was in the right place. I stepped inside and immediately felt a multitude of hungry eyes on me, like lions watching something small, cold, and shivering entering their den.

Behind the bar was the owner of the place, Tifa Lockhart, as well as her squeeze, Cloud Strife. You'd think that he would be the owner and she the squeeze, but I could tell that it was just the way things worked around here. Strife served up drinks with the look of a man who's seen things that he'd rather forget, things that haunt him and make him wish that it'd been different. It was a vacant, wall-eyed stare and an occasional sheepish grin that concealed something that was eating him from the inside.

It was only when he looked at Lockhart that his shoulders lifted and his eyes matched his mouth's smile, and I could see why he was with her. She did something for him, something that made the long sleepless hours of the cold morning bearable. She was the salve for his soul, which would be otherwise left cold and bleeding on the side of the road.

I'm only an occasional patron of their establishment, but Lockhart knows me by sight if not by name, so when she saw me come in she gave me a shout and motioned me over to the bar. I brushed past the human rubble of a city that's rusting faster than it can be patched up and took a seat.

"Evening," I said.

"Evening," Strife said evenly, and Lockhart also said hello. "What'll you have?"

"Bourbon," I replied.

"Straight?"

"The only kind of bourbon there is."

He nodded and poured me a shot, which I tipped back immediately. The warm, familiar burn worked its way down my throat, and I gave a contented sigh and savored the feeling before I said, "So. You two are friends of Vincent Valentine, right?"

Strife stopped halfway through pouring me another shot, and Lockhart paused while cleaning out a mug. "You could say that," Strife finally said, finishing the second shot.

I tipped that back, too, gave a small shake of my head when he got ready to pour me a third one, and said, "I'm looking for him. An acquaintance of yours, Yuffie Kisaragi, walked into my office not half an hour ago and told me he was missing. Any ideas where he might be?"

Both of them shook their heads. "We don't really work for the WRO, so we don't keep in regular touch with Vincent," Lockhart told me. "We see him occasionally, and every year for the reunion, of course, but other than that…"

I nodded. "Of course. Thanks for your help anyway." Getting up from the bar, I left a note on the table for the drinks and surveyed the rest of the establishment until I saw the man I originally came here to see.

His name is Tseng, and I know him from my previous line of work.

He was sitting in a corner booth, nursing a Bloody Mary, the discarded celery stick sitting forlornly at the edge of the table. I sat down across from him, and he looked up from his inspection of the tabletop, a "go away" clearly on his lips until he saw who I was. When he recognized me, he slowly took a measured sip of his drink and then said, "Dick."

"Tseng," I replied. "Been a while."

"Yes, it has," he mused. "What do you want?"

"I'm looking for Vincent Valentine," I told him. "Any hints?"

Tseng pretended to look as though he was mulling it over, or maybe he was and just doing a bad job of it, but after a minute he nodded. "You didn't hear this from me, Dick…"

"…since you technically don't have any say-so or need-to-know status in the WRO and are just a secret operative…"

"…but there's been a big shakedown going on in the WRO R and D department. It's a shame, but the weapons development program had a few… problems."

I raised an eyebrow. "Problems?"

"Problems like the tester for the experimental rifle not being who he said he was. Problems like said subject blowing his way out of the building with a hundred million gil's worth of experimental technology in his hands. Problems like him now being at large somewhere in Edge."

"Those are some pretty big problems."

"Reeve figured that the only WRO operative capable of apprehending the subject without damaging him or the rifle too much was Vincent. That was three days ago; we haven't heard from him since."

I shifted a bit in my chair and felt the heavy piece of lead in my pocket. If Vincent Valentine hadn't been able to take down this guy, what good would me and a .357 be against him?

"Feel like you're getting in a bit too deep?" Tseng asked me, picking up on my body language. "All I know is that Vincent was convinced that the perpetrator wasn't working alone. It would take a lot of luck, coincidence, and very careful planning to get this guy as a volunteer tester if he was working alone. If there was more than one person involved…"

"A plant," I said.

"Exactly. By whom, we don't know." Tseng sat back and resumed nursing his drink. "That's all I have for you."

"I appreciate it."

That got me started on this whole crazy chase. Other people being involved in what was essentially corporate espionage told me that it was either a conspiracy within the WRO or an attempt by a rival entity to gain an advantage. The world is a big place, now, and there are lots of powerful corporations out there that would love to get their hands on experimental WRO technology.

I needed to see someone who was in on the corporate scene, to figure out who was moving and shaking and might be responsible for the plant. One name came immediately to mind.


	2. Il a mis son manteau de pluie

The walk over to my destination from Seventh Heaven was short and took me closer to the center of town. The building in question stands on Gainsborough Street in the financial district. It was probably around six or six-fifteen at this point. The receptionist was being bitchy about my not having an appointment.

"Mr. Wallace is a very busy man," she told me for the third or so time. "If you'd like to schedule an appointment, he can see you next week."

Barrett Wallace. Not a name that anyone would have associated with money and power two years ago, but just after Deepground went under, he founded his own oil firm with a little help from Rufus Shin-Ra – who is living comfortably in semi-retirement as of the moment – and the two of them formed the Wallace & Shin-Ra Oil Company. Unlikely partners to be sure, considering they used to be bitter enemies and still don't get along, but the company was a complete success, and Wallace is now the second-richest man in the world, after Rufus and before Tuesti.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. The storm still raged on outside, and I wished that I had its boundless energy. It could hurl itself against the metal walls of Edge over and over and never get tired of it, but after five minutes of talking with this woman I felt like I wanted to shoot something.

"Tell Mr. Wallace," I finally said, "that I know who dropped his plate."

Very few people would get that reference. Two seconds after she sent the message to her boss, Wallace's gruff voice came on the intercom and told the woman to send me on up. I flashed her a brief shit-eating grin and walked over to the elevators, trailing a small lake behind me on the marble floor.

When I emerged from the elevator on the top floor, I saw Wallace seated behind a big wooden desk, in front of a window that enjoyed a panoramic view of Edge. It was hard to see anything now, what with the rain and the hour, but I could tell it had to be nice on clear days.

Wallace himself was wearing a business suit of a very dark blue thread with a black shirt and dark blue tie. The silver of his right hand gleamed in the illumination of the overhead lights, and he watched me steadily. The staccato sound of the rain was diminished in his office,and it was possible here to pretend that I didn't live in a city of scrap metal and broken lives.

"I bet you think yer real funny, droppin' that bit about the Sector Seven plate," he said bluntly to me as soon as I stepped out of the elevator. "Who're you, first, an' second, gimme a good reason to tell my daughter why I'm gonna be late to dinner tonight."

"I'm just a man with some old connections," I replied. "And if Marlene asks why you're late, tell him that you were helping to save Vincent Valentine's life."

Wallace's expression narrowed into angry suspicion when I called his daughter by her first name and then exploded into shock when I delivered the imperative half of my statement. He leaned forward in his chair. "Siddown," he said, gesturing to a rich leather seat in front of his desk, which I promptly took. He relaxed a bit, produced a pair of cigars from a case in his pocket, and asked, "Smoke?"

"Not cigars," I replied. "But you won't mind if I indulge myself, then."

"Nope." Wallace cut the head of one of the cigars off with two fingers of his silver hand, which looked like a handy trick, and put the other one away before lighting up. I produced a cigarette and he offered me his lighter flame.

"Thanks," I said around the cigarette in my mouth.

"No problem," he said, his tone now guarded rather than hostile. "You say Valentine's in trouble? Why're you talkin' to me then, Mister…"

"Dick," I replied. "Yuffie Kisaragi hired me to find him, and I have information that points towards corporate espionage that he was investigating." His face started to shade back to hostile, and I quickly added, "Of course you and your company aren't suspected of anything – I came to you because I know that you know Valentine, and I also know that you're informed about the corporate scene."

Wallace took a puff of his cigar and blew a smoke ring that made me envious. "Yeah, I hear the occasional thing or two," he said easily. "What exactly're we talkin' about here?"

"Experimental weapons," I replied.

He raised his eyebrows and took another puff. "I haven't heard nothin' 'bout no experimental weapons on any markets, legit or otherwise."

"It's only one weapon," I told him. "It was a prototype WRO rifle test, and the tester was a plant. Made off with the weapon."

"Well," Wallace said pensively, "the only corporate body 'sides the WRO that's doin' any real research into shit like that would be Nightstone Unlimited. It's a Costa Del Sol-based firm that jus' recently opened up operations here in Edge. They used to do manufacturin' work for Shin-Ra on stuff like guard robots an' the like. Ever since the WRO took over, they been doin' mostly independent stuff. But they're not competin' with the WRO over experimental rifles, I can tell ya that."

"Where are their offices in Edge?" I asked.

"Their corporate office is on the north side of Meteor Street," Wallace replied. I exhaled some smoke in surprise; Meteor Street is the road that divides Edge into its northern and southern sides and is home to places like the WRO Tower and the headquarters of Highwind Airlines, and thus makes for very expensive real estate. "A lil' bird told me that they got some warehouses down in the western south side of the city, too, but I'd check their offices first."

"Funny that a Costa Del Sol-based firm that only recently set up in Edge is big enough to have a property on Meteor Street," I observed.

"Yeah," Wallace said, cigar smoke leaking from behind his teeth as he gave a very forced chuckle. "Funny."

* * *

I thought that the Nightstone Unlimited building on Meteor Street was pretty impressive, even when viewed through pouring rain. It was a black, towering edifice that loomed over everything below it, a dark testament to the lengths that money and power can go. Not that I was convinced that I would find anything here, but it was the best lead so far, and there was nothing else promising yet.

I let myself in, even though the building was technically supposed to be closing down now – it was around seven o'clock, and when people get this successful they don't work late unless they're obsessed or too lazy to get up early.

"I'm sorry, sir, this building is closing," the man at the desk told me. "If you have business here, it's going to have to wait until tomorrow." I sized him up: young, bored-looking, wearing a slightly cheap suit that spoke of a lack in his life, both of taste and cash.

"Give you twenty gil to let me stick around for a bit after you close up," I said.

"Fifty."

"Thirty-five."

"Deal."

I pulled some small-denomination notes out of my pocket and handed them to the man, who gave me a grin and told me not to break anything. Good help really is hard to find these days, as evidenced by my lack of a secretary.

Well, I actually can't afford a secretary. I just tell myself I don't have one because a good one is hard to find.

I briefly consulted the plaque next to the elevator saying what departments are on what floors and quickly singled out the accounting department. A minute later I was there, and of course somebody had forgotten to log out of their account in their office, so I sat down and took a look through the financial archives of Nightstone Unlimited.

It all seemed pretty aboveboard and legit the first time I cruised through the history of the past month, and I'm no accountant, but a second look-see revealed some discrepancies, and a third revealed that all the small discrepancies added up to one big one. Five million gil had dropped off of the face of the earth over the last month, and I could guess at where it had landed. If Tseng was right about the stolen rifle being worth a hundred million gil, five million would be a pretty reasonable down payment to get things rolling.

Then again, I don't routinely deal with stuff this big, so I thought that my sense of how big this was might be a bit off. I mean, I'm no executive or big businessman, so maybe five million is just skimming the top off the profits, especially with a company this large. I briefly considered comparing the revenue generated by the company over a longer period of time, but my thoughts were cut short by the deliberate scrape of a boot on the carpet behind me.

"You work for the WRO?"

"No," I replied.

"Good. Then they won't miss ya."

Something hit me over the back of my head, and I saw a lot of very beautiful stars.

* * *

When I came to, my first thought was that the man I bribed had probably tipped off his company anyway. My second thought was that if the first was true, it was hard to even bribe good help these days, which conflicted with finding it being hard.

My third thought was that I was being carried through an alleyway by a pair of large, burly men. To be more specific, they were hoisting me up by my arms and letting my feet drag along the ground, which was damn sloppy even given the rain that continued to pour down on us. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of two more men. None of them were making the slightest effort to conceal themselves. I thought, vaguely, that the people I used to work with – in a way, at least – never would have been this careless when disposing of somebody.

It was ironic that two of those people materialized out of the night like black, avenging angels, descending on the men who were probably going to go dump me in a trash compactor or something similarly gruesome. I heard a very loud smack and a short, sharp gasp as one of the men behind me took a blow to the head that dropped him stone-cold to the ground. The ones who had me by the arms immediately dropped me and started to pull their weapons.

They never got a chance to clear the guns. There was a flash of metal, blue sparks, and both of them staggered back, convulsing and twitching before they dropped to the ground. I blindly kicked out at the last one behind me, managing to score him in the kneecap. I felt the joint bend backwards, which it clearly wasn't supposed to do. The guy started to scream before he was taken out as well.

Hitting the hard, wet concrete of the alleyway was more than enough to clear the remaining cobwebs out of my mind, though my head still felt like someone had bludgeoned it with something heavy – which, all things considered, probably was what had happened.

I wiped muddy water out of my eyes, wondering if it would ever be possible to get my trenchcoat clean again, and saw that one of my rescuers was offering me a hand up. I grabbed it and let him help haul me to my feet. It was only when I was vertical again, albeit woozily, that I recognized precisely who had saved me. "Oh, no."

Reno sneered at me. "Wow, Hydra. You're getting old or something, huh? If Rude and I hadn't been on stakeout here, they mighta just tossed you in a meat grinder and nobody ever woulda known."

"Stakeout?" I muttered. "You're working for the WRO on this case too?"

"Keeping an eye on Nightstone," Rude said from behind me. "You already know about the rifle. Tseng phoned."

"If he knew about or suspected Nightstone's involvement, why didn't he just tell me?" I groused. "It would have saved me a trip to see Barrett Wallace to get told the exact same thing."

"Tseng wanted confirmation from Barrett on whether or not Nightstone could be involved," Reno told me, "and he didn't want the WRO to owe the guy a favor. So he took his opportunity when he saw it."

"Wonderful," I muttered. "I don't give two shits about your missing rifle, though. I'm looking for Vincent Valentine."

"They had Vincent go out looking for it too?" Reno asked. "Wow."

"Seems like the WRO's left hand doesn't know what its right is doing," I said.

"More like the WRO couldn't tell its left from its right or its head from its ass," Reno drawled. "Working for Shin-Ra was a lot easier in some ways… yeah, we didn't know that Vincent was involved on this case too. He's gone missing, huh?"

"Tseng told me that he was the only operative the WRO has that Reeve thought could bring in the rifle and the perpetrator, so I'm guessing he sent Valentine out to find him and bring him back, sans evidence or red tape, while you two were assigned to watch for enough suspicious activity to qualify for issuing a warrant."

"Sounds right," Rude said.

"Wish we could help, Hydra, but we don't know jack shit about what Vincent's up to," Reno said. "Or where he could be, either."

"Don't worry too much about it," I said. "You two get back to your stakeout… for which, by the way, I pity you almost as much as I'm thankful."

Reno blew a fairly irreverent raspberry. "Whatever, Hydra. You just keep doing your thing, and we'll do ours. Just like the good old days." He walked over to join Rude, who gave me a brief nod, and the two of them vanished like shadows eaten up by the night.

* * *

Obviously you're saying to yourself, "Hydra used to be a Turk!" This is patently untrue. I knew the Turks, but I never was a Turk. To say otherwise would be deceitful and make me a horrible liar.

And that would be bad, because I pride myself on being a pretty good liar when push comes to shove.

It was quite a walk from the Nightstone Unlimited building on Meteor Street to the western south side of the city. When I arrived it was around eight-thirty, and the skies continued to pour like there was no tomorrow, a possibility that was beginning to loom bigger and bigger in my immediate future.

The three Nightstone warehouses looked like they hadn't seen use in a very long time, almost as though they had been bought up and never even touched. I scouted the perimeter of the nearest one and found nothing out of the ordinary, but decided to go inside anyway.

The building obviously wasn't well-protected against the elements, because the smell of rust, rot, and wet wood instantly hit me when I let myself in through a small door in the side. The warehouse was piled full of crates, some of them neatly stacked to the ceiling, some haphazardly tossed around. A few of the ones that had been tossed had broken or rotted open to reveal nothing but straw inside. I pried open a few other crates at random and again found nothing but straw. What the hell was going on here?

I moved from the first warehouse to the second and found it to be in similar condition. All of the crates in here were also full of straw. I dug deeper, looking in the straw for hidden things, but my searches turned up nothing. None of the crates were marked in any way, so if Nightstone was smuggling illicit cargo into the city through these warehouses then they were going to have a hell of a time sorting through their own decoys to find the real stuff.

Then again, maybe they had time for that kind of thing, time which I sorely lacked. Regardless, I wasn't going to find Valentine in crates… unless I was far too late, in which case that was a messy and unpleasant future that I might have to give some consideration to. Would Kisaragi still pay me if I delivered the vivisected pieces of her boyfriend back to her? She _had_ told me to just find him by tomorrow and hadn't said anything about the condition I found him _in_.

I brushed those thoughts away for the moment. There was still the third warehouse to investigate.

Something was very different about the third warehouse from the moment I found the entrance. The door was ajar and there wasn't a collection of rust on its hinges as there had been on the doors of warehouses one and two. Furthermore, if I concentrated hard, I could faintly make out the susurrus of quiet voices even through the pouring rain.

I quietly slipped inside, being very careful to let the sound of the rain cover any noise my movements made. A peal of thunder sounded, and I nearly jumped. The storm was obviously worsening.

The crates in this warehouse were all stacked neatly, and in fact they made a kind of maze – definitely on purpose. I wound my way cautiously through it, .357 drawn, following the sound of the voices, which were growing louder and louder as I drew closer.

Finally, I was able to make out distinctive voices, though not words. I turned a corner and a particular arrangement of vowel sounds and consonants clicked into recognition in my head. "…Valentine." Bingo, I thought. I should have gotten out of there, found a place with some cell phone signal, and called somebody, but call me stupid or curious, I kept going until I was just shy of where the voices were coming from.

An overhead light was shining down on a small clearing in the center of the warehouse. Carefully, ever so carefully, I pulled my knife from my boot and angled it so it gave me a slightly dirty, blurry reflection of what was going on around the corner…


	3. Et il est parti

There were three men standing around and talking, one of them significantly bigger and stronger-looking than the other two, who were unremarkable. The big guy had dark black hair, wore a simple, black two-piece suit that fit snugly over what had to be a lot of muscle, and had the practiced air of a very dangerous man.

I stared at the reflection in my knife, uncomprehending for a minute, until I was sure. Even in the harsh light from the overhead light, it was clear: the man's eyes were glowing. Mako eyes.

Between the three men there was a chair, and tied to that chair with a whole lot of rope was Vincent Valentine. He was in the red cloak that the media – and his fan club – wet themselves over. He looked a bit worse for the wear, with bruises on his face and his hair in disarray, but he still seemed alert and not at all happy about the conditions. His big brass gauntlet was on the floor several feet away, as were his metal shoes that looked like they would be very unpleasant to get kicked by.

The big man, who was definitely an ex-SOLDIER, was speaking to his cohorts and clearly ignoring Valentine. "…partnership with Nightstone doesn't mean I'm your bitch now. You get the rifle when you can tell me why the WRO was making it. This kind of stuff is classified as Class-M weaponry and is _illegal._"

"Somehow the man who helped us commit corporate espionage having cold feet about the weapon being illegal seems strange," one of the other men said.

"Don't patronize me," the ex-SOLDIER snarled. He had a deep voice, with a savage undertone that spoke to the hardships he must have gone through. "The WRO is all nice and holy since Tuesti's in charge. They don't make illegal weaponry unless they really, really need it. Isn't that right, Valentine?"

Valentine said nothing, but gave the ex-SOLDIER a contemptuous look.

It was becoming clear to me what was going on. This ex-SOLDIER had caught Valentine while the latter was investigating the loss of the rifle, which the former had helped Nightstone steal. Clearly, Nightstone was looking to get into arms trading to supplement its legitimate profits, which had probably been declining ever since Shin-Ra had been put out of business. The problem now was that the ex-SOLDIER was suspicious of both Nightstone's and the WRO's motives in wanting to steal and manufacture the rifle, respectively, and thought he could get a better deal if he knew what was going on.

But that begged the question: why manufacture the rifle if it was so illegal? And for that matter, what made it so illegal and experimental in the first place?

My thoughts were interrupted by the ex-SOLDIER punching right through the crate I was crouched behind and landing a blow square in the small of my back. I felt the pain shoot all up and down my body, rekindling the headache that I'd been nursing ever since the attack on me in Nightstone's building. I hit the ground, hard, the .357 falling from my grip, and the ex-SOLDIER hauled me to my feet and looked me square in the face.

"Whaddaya know!" he crowed. "Now there's a face I thought I'd never see again. You probably don't know me, but I was one of the SOLDIER 2nd Classes that deserted with Genesis all those years ago. When I saw what he was doing with us, though, turning us into clones of himself, I split and took up mercenary work. Never could find me, couldja… Hydra, Director of the Shin-Ra Internal Affairs Division?"

"The name is Dick," I told him. "They only called me Hydra because I had eyes everywhere… like I had more than one head. A lot more than one."

"Really? Always thought that was a stupid nickname. I'm Uziel." He reached with his free hand into his suit and brought out what looked like a small box, about the length of my forearm and a bit wider.

Then he pressed in a corner of the box, and invisible seams parted, whirring moving parts clicked and hissed, and the little harmless box transformed into a small but extremely lethal-looking rifle. I stared at it like he was holding a venomous snake, especially when he leveled it at my head. "So, Valentine!" he laughed. "Talk! Tell me why you guys made this thing, or I'll test it out again on 'Dick.'"

Valentine looked at me with an expression that could best be described as a study in exasperation, and then said, "Fine. What you," he looked at me, "probably don't know is that the rifle is illegal for a reason. Class-M? M is for Mako."

I stared at him. "A rifle powered by Mako?"

"Not just powered by it – it makes Mako projectiles. Bullets, explosives… the rifle has a wide range of configurations, both already implemented and still planned. Obviously, Mako harvesting is highly illegal nowadays in the interests of protecting the planet, but it won't matter if we don't have a planet left to protect."

Uziel raised both his eyebrows at that. "Really. Now we get to the meat of this little matter."

Valentine sighed. "You both know that AVALANCHE defeated Sephiroth – not just once, but twice. He used the cells of JENOVA, the Calamity, to achieve his ends, and we think that was just the beginning."

"Of what?" Uziel asked.

"There were only a few JENOVA cells left, and all of the known ones were in WRO possession. Before we destroyed them, closer study of the cells and their telepathic capabilities revealed something very alarming. The telepathy is limited only by the speed of light. It has effectively unlimited range, and given enough time, the remaining JENOVA cells could have transmitted anything to anywhere in the universe… and we're fairly sure that they have."

"What? What did they transmit?" I asked.

"Even if they hadn't sent out a signal with this specific intent, all the communication that Sephiroth was doing between himself and his clones five years ago is already five light-years away," Vincent explained. "It's like a radio wave on a psychic band. There's no way to direct it, you just broadcast it, and it can be picked up on specific frequencies. And…" He hesitated, then continued, "When he was defeated the second time and the JENOVA cells were examined, anyone who had had Geostigma in the past – or, like you, Uziel, who had been injected with the cells – could hear something, almost like a whisper, at the edge of their hearing. The WRO used various methods to amplify the signal, and the resulting transmission, though interpretable only by people previously exposed to the cells, was very clear.

"In short, they called for help."

Uziel and I both stared at Valentine like he was crazy. "No," Uziel said.

"Yes," Valentine replied. "We destroyed all the cells as soon as we realized what was going on, but it was far too late. There are, beyond any doubt, other JENOVAs out there. How far out we don't know, but eventually they will pick up on Sephiroth's telepathy, followed relatively quickly by this world's JENOVA's last call for help. We may have days, weeks, months, years, decades… but it is a safe assumption to assume that they will be coming. And if one JENOVA was enough to do all of this to the world, imagine what another, or more than one, could do."

Uziel was so taken aback that he lowered the rifle, just a little bit.

I took my opportunity. I crushed my elbow into his nose, simultaneously throwing his rifle arm askew. He swore heatedly and instinctively fired, the weapon spitting bluish-green bolts of fire that blew clean through the metal ceiling of the warehouse, showering us with rust and water. I dove for my .357, felt my fingers close around the grip, and came up in a roll with the gun cocked.

Uziel was a SOLDIER 2nd class in his prime, and while I'm a good shot, handy in a barfight, and – as you now know – a cunning and ruthless enough mind to be head of Shin-Ra's Internal Affairs Division, I'm not a warrior. Put me in front of somebody like Strife or the late Sephiroth and I wouldn't last a second. Uziel roared, blood gushing from his nose, and leveled the rifle at me, and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

Blue-green fire blew chunks out of the concrete floor where I had been crouching. I didn't bother to look back as I rushed into a full-tilt run and made for the maze of boxes surrounding the center of the warehouse. Faintly, I heard the unpleasant pop of Uziel resetting his nose, followed by, "Don't stand there like morons! We have to find and kill him, you scumbags!"

I slowed my flight to a prowl, trying not to make too much noise. Desperately trying to control my breathing, which was rattling in my chest like a bad combustion engine, I heard the scrape of shoes on the concrete as the two men from Nightstone pursued me. I couldn't tell if Uziel was following me or not, and the thought was banished from my mind when I heard pounding footsteps as my hunters prepared to turn the corner I had just taken.

Without thinking, I whirled and let fly with a slug just as the first one turned the corner. It took him in the shoulder and lifted him off of his feet for a second before slamming him back down to the ground, howling. Lucky shot. There was a heavy scrape as his partner tried to brake, failed, and came skidding straight into my sights. This time I was more accurate; the slug took the second one through the mouth, unpleasant but effective. I cocked the gun a third time and shot the one on the floor again, and he stopped trying to get up.

I heard the sound of splintering wood from above me, and I instinctively hurled myself back and fired blindly towards the noise. The slug went wide of Uziel, who had been using the time it took me to dispatch the Nightstone men to climb up the crates and get into a position where he could shoot me like a rat in a maze.

The Mako rifle spoke. Actually, its report wasn't particularly impressive for single shots. It was kind of a low thrum.

But it fired fast, fast enough that the thrumming became one, endless sound that throbbed with low, heady menace. I ran, not exactly sure where Uziel was, knowing that if I looked up to find him while running I'd smack into a wall and if I stopped to look up he wouldn't miss. I felt the blasts shoot by me, missing by bare inches, singeing my coat and burning any exposed skin. The bolts burned straight through wood and straw as though it wasn't there, and it made huge divots in the concrete floor and smoking holes in the metal walls. If I got hit with that thing, I'd be a dead man.

I turned a corner, saw that the path forked, decided to take a right since that led farther away from where the thrumming was coming from, and then saw an opportunity. There were two adjacent stacks of crates that made up part of the maze, but the bottommost crates in each stack were far enough apart that they created a little cubbyhole beneath the rest of the crates, which were touching and thus stabilized one another. Without pausing to question my good fortune, I went down on my hands and knees, praying that Uziel couldn't see me, and squeezed inside.

* * *

And so far, for the past ten seconds, the thrumming has stopped and Uziel hasn't found me. I'm desperately trying to keep control of my breathing, considering that I should give up smoking because it's going to get me killed if not kill me. The smell of wet wood and sawdust is overpowering in this small, confined space.

"Oh, you're playing hide-and-seek?" Uziel calls. "You think that's gonna work, Dick? Please. This Mako rifle really is amazing. I only managed to get away with the clip already in it and two extras, but each one is worth a thousand shots! Your tax dollars at work, eh? I can easily blow up this entire warehouse!"

As if to punctuate his point, I hear a much louder thrum, and there's suddenly the sound of a huge explosion not too far from my current position. Bits of rotten wood and sawdust rain down behind me, and I hunker down even further.

"So we can do this one of two ways, Dick! You can come out, and I'll make it quick, or I can go ahead and take apart this building piece by piece and we'll see how quick that is then!"

I swallow, which sounds infinitely louder than usual, and decide that my only chance is to wait for a distraction of some sort, then pull out of my hiding spot, hope I can see Uziel before he sees me, and shoot him.

"COME ON!" Uziel roars, and blows up another part of the warehouse. "I'M GETTING TESTY HERE!"

Vaguely, I'm aware of a bright white flash outside my hiding spot, which I abruptly realize is lightning.

I get ready, and not a second later, a deafening peal of thunder splits the air. I throw myself out of my hidey-hole, scanning desperately for Uziel, my eyes meet his as I try to bring my magnum around and he aims the rifle, I'm too slow and too old –

Vincent Valentine rises up behind Uziel, looking like an angry pale spirit cloaked in blood and vengeance, and rips the rifle out of the ex-SOLDIER's grip. A split second later I pull the trigger, not able to react fast enough to keep from firing, and bury a slug in Uziel's heart.

He gives a cry, blood spurting from his mouth, and jerks violently in place before falling limply back against Valentine, who catches him and leaps back down to the ground with him. My own heart pounding in my throat, my limbs quivering, I barely manage to run back over to the center of the warehouse, where I find Valentine with the rifle, back in box form, and a very dead Uziel. Valentine is closing the man's eyes when I get there.

"We're leaving," Valentine says shortly. "Let's go, Dick."

"Fine with me," I wheeze, ejecting the last unfired slug from my .357's chamber and returning it to my pocket. Valentine picks up his gauntlet and slips it back onto his arm, securing it there, before we proceed outside.

The last peal of thunder was the worst the storm had to offer. The rain is beginning to lessen, though the city still smells of rust and broken lives. I can see a star glimmering through the clouds, and I shiver as I gaze up at it. "What you said back there, Valentine. About JENOVA calling for help, and more of it – them – coming. That was true?"

"Of course not," Valentine says.

I stare at him as though he's grown a second head, and he gives me a very small, very self-satisfied smile. "I made all of that up to make Uziel let down his guard and give you an opening to exploit. Good job, by the way."

"So your story… the impending doom… all of it was a lie?"

"Exactly."

A huge weight falls from my shoulders, and I physically straighten up and feel the cold chills stop crawling down my spine. I look at the simultaneously deadly and innocuous weapon he holds under his arm. "So… what was the reason for that rifle, then?"

"What rifle?" a new voice asks.

I turn to see Kisaragi standing behind me, dressed in a ninja outfit, or at least what I assume passes for one – I doubt the amount of leg and midriff she's showing is standard, but it speaks volumes about her. "The rifle he's holding under his arm," I reply.

"This isn't a rifle," Kisaragi tells me cheerfully. She moves to Valentine's side, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and takes the weapon from him. "It may look, act, and seem like one, but the twelve thousand, five hundred gil I left along with your first payment and the guy who's coming tomorrow to fix the leak in your roof say it's not."

I look, almost disbelievingly, from Valentine to Kisaragi to Valentine to the rifle he has under his arm that nearly killed me. "Uh-huh," I finally say. "Everyone has their secrets. Even benevolent bodies like the WRO, eh?"

"The WRO will stay benevolent because of this," Valentine tells me. "Certain people went ahead with a highly illegal experiment without Reeve's permission, thinking that simply because they had the authority they had the justifiable right. Now, there'll be an investigation, heads will roll, and corruption will be stopped at the source. This… not-rifle –" he looks at Kisaragi and I see something intimate flash between them – "will never be seen or used again."

"It was a dream, Dick," Kisaragi says.

"A dream," I repeat.

"Yes," Valentine confirms. "You'll wake up tomorrow and be twenty-five thousand gil richer, and minus an irritating leak in your roof, and you won't press the issue or try to figure out precisely what happened, and anybody who asks will know that a dream was all it was. You'll just be happy at your good fortune."

I shrug. "All right. I didn't survive being Director of Internal Affairs for Shin-Ra without knowing when to push and when to back off. Just – one question."

Kisaragi looks like she's considering it, then says to Valentine, "Well, Vinnie? What d'you think? Is one question okay?"

"I suppose," Valentine deadpans.

"Kay!" Kisaragi says. "One question, Dick."

"Why the time limit?" I ask. "Why 'before tomorrow?'"

"Oh, that? That's easy," Kisaragi replies. "Tomorrow's AVALANCHE's fifth anniversary, and I wouldn't want Vinnie to miss the party. Besides, if all of us were celebrating and getting drunk while this not-rifle and Vinnie were both missing, it would really put a damper on the mood."

"I guess it would at that," I sigh.

"Since you helped out so much, you want to come, Dick? You look like you could do with some fun."

I laugh and reach for a cigarette. "Me? Come to an AVALANCHE reunion?"

"Yeah!"

"Not even if JENOVA really was going to come back and kill us all." She looks quizzically at Valentine when I say that, who gives her a look that eloquently says he'll explain later.

I light up my cigarette, take a long draw on it, and feel my lungs shrivel up a bit more. "If this is the kind of thing that happens on a regular basis for you people, I'll settle for sitting in my crappy office and helping jealous women find out that their men, like most men, are unfaithful little shits. Good evening to both of you."

I turn and walk away, and I don't look back. The cigarette tastes like hell, this city will always stink of rust and shattered dreams, and the world is effectively run by crazy sons-of-bitches who walk a knife's edge between autocracy and chaos.

It could be worse, though. I could be dead.

**Un rêve en rouge et noir**

**OR**

**Dancing in the Rain**

**Fin**


End file.
